(Redirected from William R. Hearst)
: '' For other people named William Randolph Hearst, see
William Randolph Hearst (disambiguation)''
'William Randolph Hearst I' (
April 29,
1863 –
August 14,
1951) was an
American newspaper magnate.
Early life
Hearst was born in
San Francisco, California to
George Hearst and
Phoebe Apperson. Following preparation at
St. Paul's School in Concord, NH, he enrolled in the
Harvard College class of 1885, where he was a member of
Delta Kappa Epsilon fraternity, the
A.D. Club (a prestigious Harvard
Final club), and of the
Harvard Lampoon prior to his expulsion from Harvard for a crude prank
[1]. Heir to a vast mining fortune, at the age of twenty-four Hearst acquired and developed a series of influential
newspapers, starting with the ''
San Francisco Examiner'' in 1887, forging them into a national brand. His New York City paper, the ''
New York Morning Journal'', became known for sensationalist writing and for its agitation in favor of the
Spanish-American War, and the term
yellow journalism (a
pejorative reference to scandal-mongering,
sensationalism,
jingoism and similar practices) was derived from the ''Journal's'' color
comic strip, ''
The Yellow Kid''.
Though he served two terms in the
U.S. Congress, Hearst's political ambitions were mostly frustrated, as he failed in two bids to become
Mayor of New York City (1905 and 1909) and one race for
governor of New York (1906). He was a prominent leader of the liberal wing of the
Democratic Party from 1896 to 1935, but he became more conservative later in life.
His palatial
estate,
Hearst Castle, near
San Simeon, California, on a hill overlooking the
Pacific Ocean, halfway between Los Angeles and San Francisco, was donated by the
Hearst Corporation to the state of
California in
1957, and is now a State Historical Monument and a
National Historic Landmark, open for public tours. Hearst formally named the estate 'La Cuesta Encantada' ('The Enchanted Hill'), but he usually just called it 'the ranch'.
Publishing business
An ad asking automakers to place ads in Hearst chain, noting their circulation.
Searching for an occupation, in 1887 he took over management of a newspaper which his father
George Hearst had accepted as payment of a gambling debt, the ''
San Francisco Examiner''. Giving his paper a grand motto, "Monarch of the Dailies", he acquired the best equipment and the most talented writers of the time. A self-proclaimed
populist, Hearst went on to publish stories of municipal and financial corruption, often attacking companies in which his own family held an interest. Within a few years, his paper dominated the San Francisco market.
''New York Morning Journal''
In 1895, with the financial support of his mother, he bought the failing ''
New York Morning Journal'', hiring writers like
Stephen Crane and
Julian Hawthorne and entering into a head-to-head circulation war with his former mentor,
Joseph Pulitzer, owner of the ''
New York World'', from whom he 'stole'
Richard F. Outcault, the inventor of color
comics. His was the only major newspaper in the East to support
William Jennings Bryan and
Bimetallism in 1896. ''The New York Journal'' (later ''New York Journal-American'') reduced its price to one cent and attained unprecedented levels of circulation through sensational articles on subjects like crime and pseudoscience.
Support for Spanish-American War
The paper fought to liberate Cuba from Spanish rule. Both Hearst and Pulitzer published images of Spanish troops placing Cubans into
concentration camps where they suffered and died from disease and hunger. The term
yellow journalism, (derived from the name of ''
The Yellow Kid'' comic strip in the ''Journal''), was used to refer to these types of sensational newspaper articles. Journalism historians point out that at the time, this style was rare outside New York City and would not have affected voters elsewhere.
Hearst publicized the war in an effort to sell more papers than his rival publisher Pulitzer, both of whose circulations came to surpass a million per day. When war correspondent and illustrator
Frederic Remington telegraphed from Cuba that no war was imminent, he is said to have responded, "Please remain. You furnish the pictures and I'll furnish the war." His own political career suffered after the assassination of President
William McKinley when a satirical poem by
Ambrose Bierce he had published a few months earlier alluding to a possible McKinley assassination made the publisher look irresponsible.
Expansion
Cartoonist Rogers in 1906 sees the
political uses of Oz: he depicts William Randolph Hearst as the Scarecrow stuck in his own Ooze in ''Harper's Weekly''.
In part to aid in his political ambitions, Hearst opened newspapers in some other cities, among them Chicago, Los Angeles and Boston. The creation of his Chicago paper was requested by the
Democratic National Committee and Hearst used this as an excuse for Phoebe Hearst to transfer him the necessary start-up funds. By the mid-1920s he had a nation-wide string of 28 newspapers, among them the ''
Los Angeles Examiner'', the ''
Boston American'', the ''
Atlanta Georgian'', the ''
Chicago Examiner'', the ''
Detroit Times'', the ''
Seattle Post-Intelligencer'', the ''
Washington Times'', the ''
Washington Herald'', and his flagship the ''
San Francisco Examiner''.
Hearst also diversified his publishing interests into book publishing and magazines; several of the latter are still existent, including such well-known periodicals as ''
Cosmopolitan'', ''
Good Housekeeping'', ''
Town and Country'' and ''
Harper's Bazaar''.
In 1924 he opened the ''
New York Daily Mirror'', a racy
tabloid frankly imitating the ''
New York Daily News''. Among his other holdings were the magazines ''
Cosmopolitan'', and ''
Harper's Bazaar''; two news services,
Universal News and
International News Service;
King Features Syndicate; a film company, Cosmopolitan Productions; extensive New York City real estate; and thousands of acres of land in California and Mexico, along with timber and mining interests.
Hearst promoted writers and cartoonists despite the lack of any apparent demand for them by his readers. The press critic
A.J. Liebling reminds us how many Hearst stars would not be deemed employable elsewhere. One Hearst favorite,
George Herriman, was the inventor of the dizzy comic strip ''
Krazy Kat''; not especially popular with either readers or editors, it is now considered by many to be a classic, a belief once held only by Hearst himself.
The Hearst news empire reached a circulation and revenue peak about 1928, but the economic collapse of the
Great Depression and the vast over-extension of his empire cost him control of his holdings. It is unlikely that the newspapers ever paid their own way; mining, ranching and forestry provided whatever dividends the Hearst Corporation paid out. When the collapse came, all Hearst properties were hit hard, but none more so than the papers; adding to the burden were the Chief's now-reactionary politics, increasingly at odds with those of his readers. Refused the right to sell another round of bonds to unsuspecting investors, the shaky empire tottered. Unable to service its existing debts, Hearst Corporation faced a court-mandated reorganization in 1936. From this point, Hearst was just another employee, subject to the directives of an outside manager. Newspapers and other properties were liquidated, the film company shut down; there was even a well-publicized sale of art and antiquities. While World War II restored circulation and advertising revenues, his great days were over. Hearst died of
heart attack in 1951, aged eighty-eight, at
Beverly Hills, California, and is buried at
Cypress Lawn Memorial Park in
Colma, California.
The
Hearst Corporation continues to this day as a large, privately held
media conglomerate based in New York City.
Involvement in politics
A Democratic member of the
United States House of Representatives (1903–1907), he narrowly failed in attempts to become mayor of New York City (1905 and 1909) and
governor of New York (1906). He was defeated for the governorship by
Charles Evans Hughes. His defeat in the New York City mayoral election where he ran under a third party of his own creation (The
Municipal Ownership League) is widely attributed to
Tammany Hall. Tammany, the dominant Democratic organization in New York City at the time, (and a widely corrupt one) was said to have used every dirty trick in the book to derail Hearst's campaign. An opponent of the
British Empire, Hearst opposed American involvement in the First World War and attacked the formation of the
League of Nations.
Hearst's reputation triumphed in the 1930s as his political views changed. In 1932, he was a major supporter of
Franklin D. Roosevelt. His newspapers energetically supported the
New Deal throughout 1933 and 1934. Hearst broke with FDR in spring 1935 when the President vetoed the Patman
Bonus Bill. Hearst papers carried the old publisher's rambling, vitriolic, all-capital-letters editorials, but he no longer employed the energetic reporters, editorialists and columnists who might have made a serious attack. His newspaper audience was the same working class that Roosevelt swept by three-to-one margins in the 1936 election. In 1934 after checking with Jewish leaders to make sure the visit would prove of benefit to Jews, Hearst went to Berlin to interview
Adolf Hitler. Hitler asked why he was so misunderstood by the American press. "Because Americans believe in democracy," Hearst answered bluntly, "and are averse to dictatorship."
[2]
Personal life
Millicent Hearst
In
1903, William married
Millicent Veronica Willson (1882–1974), a beautiful 21-year-old chorus girl, in
New York City. Evidence in Louis Pizzitola's book Hearst Over Hollywood indicates that Millicent's mother Hannah Willson ran a Tammany connected and protected brothel quite near the headquarters of political power in New York City at the turn of the last century. Pizzitola's book also documents a strongly held belief at the time that Millicent and her sister Anita were prostitutes when they met Hearst. Ironically or perhaps deliberately, the first scene that Orson Welles filmed for his film Citizen Kane (deleted by the censors) takes place in a brothel. Nearly 20 years her senior, Hearst had been seeing her since she was 16. The couple had five sons:
George Randolph Hearst (1904–1972),
William Randolph Hearst Jr. (1908–1993),
John Randolph Hearst (1910–1958), and twins
Randolph Apperson Hearst (1915–2000) and
David Whitmire Hearst (1915–1986).
Conceding an end to his political hopes, Hearst became involved in an affair with popular film actress and comedienne
Marion Davies (1897–1961), and from about 1919 he lived openly with her in California. The affair ruled over Davies' life, leaving her reputation chained with Hearst's. Millicent separated from her husband in the mid-1920s after tiring of his longtime affair with Davies, but the couple remained legally married until Hearst's death. Millicent built an independent life for herself in New York City as a leading philanthropist, was active in society, and created the
Free Milk Fund for the poor in 1921.
Beginning in 1919, Hearst began to construct (and never completed) a spectacular
castle on a 240,000 acre (970 km²) ranch at
San Simeon, California, which he furnished with antiques, art, and entire rooms brought from the great houses of Europe. He also bought
St Donat's Castle near
Llantwit Major in South Wales. As with San Simeon, he spent a fortune renovating the castle, bringing electricity not only to his residence but to the surrounding area. The locals enjoyed having Hearst in residence at the castle; he paid his employees very well, and his arrivals always created a big stir in a community not used to American excesses. Hearst spent much of his time entertaining influential people at his estates.
George Bernard Shaw, upon visiting St. Donat's, was quoted as saying: "This is what God would have built if he had had the money."
Hearst paid $120,000 for the H-shaped Beverly Hills mansion in 1947, now the 'most expensive' US home on sale at $165m (£81.4m). It has 29 bedrooms, three swimming pools, tennis courts, its own cinema and a nightclub. Lawyer and investor Leonard Ross bought it in 1976. The Beverly House, as it came to be known, has some interesting cinematic connections. According to Louis Pizzitola's book Hearst Over Hollywood, Jack and Jacqueline Kennedy stayed at the house for part of their honeymoon, watching their first film together as a married couple in the mansion's theater (a Hearst produced film from the 1920s). Later, long after Hearst's death, the house was the setting for the unforgettable horse in the bed scene in the film The Godfather. Ironically, the victim in the scene is a film producer at a film company called International, also the name of Hearst's early film company.
BBC News, 'Most expensive' US home on sale.
Criticism, myths, and rumors
As Martin Lee and Norman Solomon noted in their 1990 book ''Unreliable Sources'', Hearst "routinely invented sensational stories, faked interviews, ran phony pictures and distorted real events."
Hearst's use of "yellow journalism" techniques in his ''New York Journal'' to whip up popular support for U.S. military adventurism in Cuba, Puerto Rico and the Philippines in 1898 was also criticized in
Upton Sinclair's 1919 book, ''The Brass Check: A Study of American Journalism''. According to Sinclair, Hearst's newspaper employees were "willing by deliberate and shameful lies, made out of whole cloth, to stir nations to enmity and drive them to murderous war." Sinclair also asserted that in the early 20th century Hearst's newspapers lied "remorselessly about radicals," excluded "the word Socialist from their columns" and obeyed "a standing order in all Hearst offices that American Socialism shall never be mentioned favorably." In addition, Sinclair charged that Hearst's "Universal News Bureau" re-wrote the news of the London morning papers in the Hearst office in New York and then fraudulently sent it out to American afternoon newspapers under the by-lines of imaginary names of non-existent "Hearst correspondents" in London, Paris, Venice, Rome, Berlin, etc.
Hearst was bashed continually by
Communists for being
anti-Communist, ultra-nationalist and has also been called a
Nazi by some communists. They accused him also of libel (mostly about his articles on the
Soviet Union and
Stalin).
Hearst is rumored to have provided financial assistance to
Josephine Terranova after her sensational murder trial in 1906.
Hearst also sympathized with
Harry J. Anslinger in his war against marijuana. His paper empire (he owned hundreds of acres of timber forests) was threatened by
hemp, which could be regrown yearly. He published many of the stories that Anslinger fabricated, aiding the anti-marijuana movement that eventually led to its prohibition in the
1937 Marihuana Tax Act.
''Citizen Kane''
One of the most influential films of all time was
Orson Welles' 1941 film ''
Citizen Kane'', which was loosely based on Hearst's life (Welles and co-writer
Herman J. Mankiewicz added bits and pieces from the lives of other rich men of the time, among them
Harold McCormick,
Samuel Insull and
Howard Hughes into Kane). Hearst used all his resources and influence in an unsuccessful attempt to prevent the film's release. Welles and the studio,
RKO, resisted the pressure, but Hearst and his Hollywood friends succeeded in getting theater chains to limit bookings of ''Kane'', resulting in mediocre box-office numbers and harming Welles' profits.
Fifty years later,
HBO offered a fictionalized version of Hearst's efforts in its picture ''
RKO 281''.
Now, fifty years after his death, ''Citizen Kane'' 's reputation seems secure — it was ranked #1 on the list of the
American Film Institute's 100 greatest films of all time — while Hearst's own image has largely been shaped by the film. While the film merely paints a dark portrait of Hearst, it was devastating to the reputation of
Marion Davies, fictionalizing her as a talentless drunk. Many years later, Orson Welles said his only regret about ''Kane'' was the damage it had done to Davies. In his commentary included on the US DVD,
Peter Bogdanovich asserts that the character of Susan Alexander was entirely a satire of Harold McCormick's wife Ganna, rather than of Marion.
Death of Thomas Harper Ince
In
1924, silent film producer
Thomas Harper Ince ("The Father of the
Western") died, officially of a heart attack while on a weekend yacht trip with Hearst, Davies, and other prominent Hollywood personalities. For years, rumors circulated that Hearst had shot Ince, and used his power to cover up the murder.
Patty Hearst's
1994 novel, ''Murder at San Simeon'', and a fictional
2001 film, ''
The Cat's Meow'', are based on these rumors. Hearst was reportedly extremely jealous of Davies, who had been involved in an affair with
Charlie Chaplin — one of several
paramours she would have over the years. According to the stories, Hearst went into a rage, mistook Ince for Chaplin, and shot him accidentally. General opinion seems to be that such a cover-up is unlikely, but at that time not entirely impossible.
Family
In 1974 Hearst's granddaughter,
Patty Hearst, made front pages nationwide when she was kidnapped by an extremist group, the
Symbionese Liberation Army, and was soon after caught on film helping the group to rob banks. She renounced the SLA soon after her arrest. In 1979, after 22 months in prison, Hearst's sentence was
commuted by
President Carter. She was fully
pardoned in 2001 by President
Bill Clinton.
References
1. The American Pageant: A History of the Republic, Thirteenth edition, Advanced Placement Edition, copyright 2006
2. Hitler's Piano Player, , Peter, Conradi, Carroll & Graf Publishers, ,
★ Hearst, William Randolph, Jr. and Jack Casserly. ''The Hearsts: Father and Son''. 1991.
★ Liebling, A.J. ''The Press''. 1981.
★ Lundberg, Ferdinand. ''Imperial Hearst''. 1937.
★ Nasaw, David. ''The Chief: The Life of William Randolph Hearst''. 2000.
★ Pizzitola, Louis. "Hearst Over Hollywood: Power, Passion, and Propaganda in the Movies." 2002.
★
Ben H. Procter; ''William Randolph Hearst: The Early Years, 1863-1910'' 1998.
★ St. Johns, Adela Rogers. ''The Honeycomb''. 1969.
★ Swanberg, W.A. ''Citizen Hearst''. 1961.
★ Wilkerson; Marcus M. ''Public Opinion and the Spanish-American War: A Study in War Propaganda'' 1932.
Quotes
★ "Truth is the first casualty of war." – said during the Spanish-American War
★ "You furnish the pictures and I'll furnish the war." - reportedly telegraphed to his photographer during the Spanish-American War, an event that likely never occurred
[1]
In fiction
★ In ''
The Life and Times of Scrooge McDuck'' Part 11 — "The Empire Builder from
Calisota," after surpassing Hearst on his quest to be the richest duck/man in the world,
Scrooge McDuck says there's 73 people richer than him, thus making Hearst the 75th one sometime in 1909.
★ In the musical ''Newsies'', the newsboys strike against the unfair policies of Hearst and his rival, Joseph Pulitzer
★ It is speculated that the fictional character of
Gail Wynand in
Ayn Rand's novel ''
The Fountainhead'' could be loosely based on Hearst's life.
★ Hearst helped grant a dying child his wish to see the ocean in an episode of ''
Little House on the Prairie''.
★ In season 3 of the television series ''
Veronica Mars'', William Randolph Hearst's last name was featured in Hearst Collage, a central setting in the series.
★ In the eighteenth
Bond film, ''
Tomorrow Never Dies'', villain
Elliot Carver mentions him and his quote, "You provide the pictures, I'll provide the war."
See also
★
Hearst Castle
★
Citizen Kane
★
North Miami Beach, Florida
★
Josephine Terranova
Notes
1. The American Pageant: A History of the Republic, Thirteenth edition, Advanced Placement Edition, copyright 2006
2. Hitler's Piano Player, , Peter, Conradi, Carroll & Graf Publishers, ,
External links
★
★
William Randolph Hearst biography, via zpub.com
★
San Simeon, the Hearst Castle
★
★
Original Bureau of Investigation Document Online: William Randolph Hearst
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